


The Ship Who Snarked

by Eleke



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Asexual Lance, Asexuality Spectrum, Crack Treated Seriously, Cyborgs, Gender-Neutral Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Hunk (Voltron) is a Good Friend, Kinda, M/M, Robot/Human Relationships, Shipping, Space Pirates, klance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-18 06:27:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15479610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eleke/pseuds/Eleke
Summary: Keith is a pilot who needs transportation to his next assignment. He purchases transportation on a cargo ship heading in the right direction and finds out that the ship is an Human-Sourced Machine; a ship powered by the consciousness of a human. Though wary at first, he soon begins to befriend the ship, Lance. But Lance and his crew hide their own secrets, and Keith is pulled between duty and desire.ORKeith falls in love with a cargo ship.Not a cargo pilot.But a cargo ship.





	The Ship Who Snarked

Influenced and very, very loosely inspired by Anne McCaffery and Mercedes Lackey’s The Ship who Searched. 

This is utter crack.

As always, please let me know if I should add a tag or clarify existing tags.

***  
Keith resettled his pack as he left the transport ship, not even bothering to look back at it. The ship was typical for cheap civilian transports – overcrowded, overwarm, and overloud, and he was glad to be rid of it. 

He had a new assignment and had to get to a planet called Daibazaal within a month. The Garrison was assisting a rebel group in overthrowing a tyrannical regime, and Keith had to be there to join forces. There were military transports leaving Earth for the waystation, but the next one wouldn’t have left for another two weeks. Instead, he managed to find a civilian one leaving within the day, and also found a seat on a cargo ship heading to the front lines of the rebellion. It had to make the occasional stop along the way, but it would get Keith to his destination in plenty of time and he wouldn’t have to wait around on Earth twiddling his thumbs.

He didn’t know the particulars of the rebellion, or why the Garrison was getting involved in what seemed to be a civil war on a planet Earth only had tentative ties to, but he didn’t ask. He would go where he was sent. 

It was pretty easy to find the cargo ship – he had the docking number, and just hopped on a passing passenger ferry to get to the other end of the waystation. When he got to the dock, he let out a low, impressed whistle. 

The ship was a real beauty. 

The cargo ships Keith was used to seeing were definitely not impressive – big, bulky whales of ships designed to cram as much cargo is could be fitted into their holds with no care to any actual aesthetics. But this ship was almost pretty – sleek lines accented the deep belly of the ship, smooth nacelles, a gleaming hull colored a fresh blue with red trim, and the name of the ship, written in stylish calligraphy – 

Keith flinched. 

_HSM Serrano, Lance_

Human-Sourced Machine.

He’d heard stories about HSMs, everyone in the Garrison did. Horror stories, mostly – don’t get too good and don’t die in battle or else they’d rip your brain out and put you into a battleship and keep you fighting after death. That sort of thing. 

Keith never put any stock in the stories. For one, HSM can’t be battleships. For another, it apparently took years of work for an HSM to be implemented in simple ground transport, let alone something spaceworthy. Thirdly, it was biased to react so negatively to something that was, in essence, just another tool to help people. But Keith had never been aboard an HSM, and if he’d read the name of the ship correctly (He didn’t see the comma after Serrano and thought ‘Lance’ referred to a weapon, not an actual _name_ ) he couldn’t with full confidence say that he wouldn’t have looked for another option. 

Keith took a deep breath. He was already paid in full, he couldn’t back out anymore. 

“Can I help you?” Someone asked him, and Keith cursed his distraction as he looked to the side where he saw a short person dressed in gender-obscuring clothes standing next to him. They had one hand on a hovering flatbed piled with containers and was eyeing Keith warily. 

“Um, maybe,” he said, pulling out his phone and bringing up his pass. “Is this your ship? I bought passage on it a couple days ago.” 

They rolled their eyes hard enough that Keith could almost hear it. “No, Lance isn’t _my_ ship,” they said, and Keith winced at his blunder. Of course not. “But yeah, I do work with him. Follow me, we’ve been expecting you. I’ll introduce you to Lance and the captain.”

Keith followed them as they pushed the flatbed up a ramp and into the ship’s hold. Keith suppressed a shiver as soon as he passed the threshold – there had to be someone watching him instantly, right? Every movement analyzed, every word recorded for posterity. He told himself not to undress fully whenever he was in his quarters. 

“Hey, help me out there,” the shorter person said, and Keith walked over to help unload the containers from the flatbed to one area of the hold. They worked in silence for a while, until Keith broke it. 

“My name is Keith Kogane, by the way,” he said, standing up and holding out his hand for a shake. 

“Call me Pidge,” they replied, taking his hand in a tight handshake, eyeing Keith up and down. “And I know who you are, you’re the only passenger we’re taking on right now.” 

“Oh,” Keith said, at a loss for any other reply. 

Pidge brushed past him, gesturing him to follow. “I’ll take you to the captain now, but I’ll have to leave you then. There’s still a lot of cargo that needs to be loaded up before we go, and we don’t have that much time.” 

“Sorry to distract you from your work,” Keith said, looking around as they walked, trying to familiarize himself with the ship’s layout. 

Pidge made a dismissive gesture without bothering to look behind themself at Keith. “Don’t worry about it, it’s not going to take that long. Hey, Lance!” The last they said in a slightly louder tone, not pausing a step. 

Keith, however, froze when there was suddenly a guy walking next to Pidge, perfectly casual and looking like he was at their side the entire time. “Looking for our illustrious captain?” he asked. 

“Yeah, just going to drop this guy off and get back to loading,” Pidge said, as if the sudden appearance of another person was nothing to blink at. Maybe it was, on this ship, Keith mused, picking up the pace once more but staying a couple wary steps back. 

“Mm-hmm,” the guy grunted, casual. “Well, Cap is in the mess with the other three, so he’ll be able to meet everyone all at once.” 

“Wait, so am I the only one here doing any actual work right now?” Pidge demanded. 

The guy leaned over to give them a smirk they couldn’t miss. “I guess that depends on how to define ‘work,’” he replied. 

“Ugh,” Pidge stopped and turned around, stomping back the way they came. “Lance, would you mind showing him the way? I’m going to finish doing what I’m _paid to do,_ then I might kick some ass before I take a nap.” 

“No problem,” the guy said, turning to watch them leave with his hands in his pockets. The guy turned to smile at Keith, and he had to plant his feet in order to keep himself from taking an instinctive step back. 

“So, you’re Keith Kogane?” The guy, Lance apparently, said. He placed a hand on his heart and bowed, sweeping his other hand out in a grandiose gesture. “I’m Lance Serrano, and I will be your transport for this venture!” 

Keith was unsure how to react. Lance wasn’t anything like he expected from an HSM. While he’d never actually encountered one before, he’d heard the stories. Like Lance, in lieu of having a functional human body, many HSM would project a hologram in order to interact with people face-to-‘face’, but Keith heard that they’d usually create some perfect human form in order to do so. Stunningly beautiful, or handsome, with perfect skin and hair, chiseled jaws and blindingly white smiles. Lance, instead, just looked like… a guy. An attractive guy, Keith admitted, but more realistically so. The only real indication that Lance was a hologram were the typical feathering around the points of his ears and fingertips, and the startling vibrant blue glow of his eyes. 

“It’s nice to meet you,” Keith eventually said, shifting his pack on his back awkwardly. “And yeah, I’m Keith.” 

Lance straightened and spun around, walking in the same direction Pidge and Keith were headed. “I’ll introduce you to the others, and then take you to your quarters where you can stash your stuff.”

“Sure,” Keith said, following at a distance, keeping an eye on Lance’s back. 

“You’ve never been on an HSM, have you?” a voice in his ear said, and Keith jumped at Lance suddenly appearing at his side. He looked between the one still walking ahead of him, and the smirking one at his side and back again, but neither of the Lances seemed to react. Keith felt like slapping himself – hologram, neither of the Lances were real, Lance was the ship itself. 

“No, I haven’t,” Keith admitted. “I’m sorry if I’m being… weird.” 

The Lance at his side shrugged, and the one leading the way popped out of existence. “You’re fine,” he said dismissively. “You haven’t tried avoiding my cameras yet, and you actually spoke to me, which hey, puts you ahead of some people.” 

Keith’s brow furrowed as he looked at Lance. The projection didn’t seemed upset by it, but Keith could detect a bitter note in his voice, which at that moment Keith realized was coming from speakers set in regular intervals down the hall. When he heard Lance at his side, he had been passing by a speaker right at that moment to make the surprise work. Lance had planned when to scare Keith ahead of time. 

“People actually don’t talk to you?” Keith asked, confused. Sure, the idea of HSM was a little weird, but there was still a person inside there. 

Lance shrugged again. “Not a lot of people, but once in a while. Or they treat me like a particularly good AI.” He dropped his voice, apparently in imitation of someone. “LANCE, FIND CAPTAIN. LANCE, WHERE IS THE HEAD. LANCE, TURN OFF CAMERAS IN HEAD.” He snorted and dropped the stilted delivery. “As if I want to watch them take a dump. Bodily functions, gross.” 

“Wait, are there cameras in the head?” Keith asked, startled. 

“No, there are no cameras in the head!” Lance said, throwing his hands up in the air. “Why does everyone think I watch them shit? If you are in there for long enough I just send someone to check on you, make sure you didn’t pass out or something. But I can’t watch you shit, or shower, and cameras in your bunk are turned off unless you specifically give me permission. Okay?” 

“Okay,” Keith said, but he had a smile on his face. Lance was a lot more animated than he expected, though he did acknowledge that what he expected arose primarily from people who probably never met an HSM in person, themselves. 

“This is it,” Lance said, indicating an open doorway they were approaching. Lance passed through, Keith on his heels, and paused in front of the table where four people were seated, pouring over a display of the galaxy, several glowing points lit up inside. As they entered, everyone looked up, and a big guy seated near the door waved the display away with a casual gesture. 

“Allura,” Lance said, indicating the only woman, who had the pointed ears and facial markings indicative of an Altean. “This is our passenger all the way to Daibazzal. Keith Kogane, this is Allura, our captain.”

“Thank you, Lance,” she said, rising to her feet and extending her hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” she said to Keith. 

“Likewise,” he said, nodding. “If there’s anything I can do to help out along the way, feel free to ask.”

Allura smiled at him in response. “I’ll keep that in mind,” she said, and gestured at the others at the table. “Let me introduce the others. This,” she gestured towards a man whose hair was mostly black but had a shock of white at the forehead. “Is our pilot and CO, Takashi Shirogane.” 

“Call me Shiro,” he said, standing to shake Keith’s hand. 

“On the other side of him is Hunk, our engineer,” Allura continued. Keith nodded at the big guy who’d dismissed the map when he’d first entered, and Hunk waved back with a smile. “And the last one we have here is Coran, our medic.” Coran was another Altean, though he was older than Allura. “There is another, but they’re not here at this time.” 

“He’s already met Pidge,” Lance cut in.

“Ah, I see,” Allura said. “Well, Pidge Gunderson is our systems specialist.” 

“Though with me around, we mostly just let them do what they want,” Lance continued, waggling his eyebrows. 

“…Like moving cargo?” Keith asked, raising an eyebrow of his own. The way that Pidge was acting, he doubted that they really _wanted_ to be doing it. 

“Oh, crap!” Hunk said, shooting to his feet. Keith instinctively took a step back – Hunk was _big_ and in the cramped mess he looked even bigger. “Sorry guys, I gotta go, Pidge is going to kill me!” He slid past Keith and ran out the door and down the narrow corridor. 

Lance stuck his head out the door and shouted after him, “Hurry! If you get there in time maybe they’ll only dismember you a little!” 

“So,” Allura said, drawing Keith’s attention away from Lance (why did he shout down the hall if he could just tell Hunk at the next speaker? Why did he peek around the doorway if he is always watching people through his cameras? If it was for Hunk’s benefit that wouldn’t make sense because Hunk wasn’t even paying Lance any attention) and back towards her. She was smiling at Keith like nothing else was going on. “Do you have any questions?” 

Keith shook his head. “Not right now. I’ll be sure to let you know.” 

“In that case,” she said. “Lance, would you be okay showing Keith to his quarters? We still have some things we need to finish up before we go underway.” 

“Sure,” Lance drawled, shoving his hands into the pockets of his hoodie. “Follow me.” 

Keith saluted Allura before following Lance back out the door. As he followed Lance he watched the other man. The hologram of the other man, he corrected himself. He had to remember that even though Lance looked like a regular person, that wasn’t actually his body. Lance was the ship. His actions didn’t seem to make sense, but it wasn’t Keith’s problem. He was going to be on the ship for a couple weeks and then he’d probably never see Lance again, so he’ll be polite but keep his distance. 

Easy.

***

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